Pelletier was first elected as President of the Connecticut AFL-CIO in 2013 becoming the first openly gay state federation leader in the country. Prior to her election as president, Pelletier served as Secretary-Treasurer for 14 years and served as the organization’s chief legislative advocate. In 2015, Pelletier was elected to serve as the Vice President representing state federations on the National AFL-CIO Executive Council. Pelletier is a 32 year member of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 700.

Under her leadership, there was a marked increase in union organizing and new membership, which resulted in the largest number of union members in the state since at least the turn of the century. When Pelletier started as President in 2013, Connecticut had 207,000 union members, and as of 2017, the state had 278,000 union members (latest data available), an increase of over 34% in just four years.

Additionally, under her direction, there was a vigorous political program that emphasized union members getting involved in political leadership and a robust legislative program. Top labor priorities that passed under her tenure include raising the minimum wage, establishing comprehensive transparency to review DECD loans to corporations, requiring the state Department of Education to create labor history curriculum, and reducing healthcare costs for municipalities by establishing health care pooling. President Pelletier also stopped a number of anti-worker, corporate funded attacks on working people, including so-called “Right-to-Work” legislation, attempted elimination of certain collective bargaining rights, repeal of prevailing wage laws, and weakening of binding arbitration laws.

A graduate of the University of Tulsa and a certified public accountant, Jones was appointed top administrative assistant to former UAW Secretary-Treasurer Roy Wyse in 1995. He continued to serve in that capacity to Secretary-Treasurers Ruben Burks and Elizabeth Bunn, until his appointment as Region 5 assistant director in 2004.

In 1990, former UAW President Owen Bieber and then-Secretary-Treasurer Bill Casstevens appointed Jones to the International staff. He was assigned to the union’s Accounting Department. A year later, Jones was named chief accountant of the UAW.

A UAW Local 1895 member, Jones was hired at Ford Motor Co.’s Glass plant in Broken Arrow, Okla., in 1975. He became a member of UAW Local 249 when he transferred to the Kansas City Ford Assembly Plant when the glass plant closed.

Jones is a lifetime member of the NAACP and various other civic and political organizations. Jones and his wife, Cindy, live in Canton, Michigan. They have two daughters and three granddaughters.

Dr. Banks is a faculty mentor for the Diversity Initiative for Tenure in Economics (DITE) program. She serves on the Board of Directors of the National Economic Association (NEA) and the editorial boards of Feminist Economics and The Review of Black Political Economy. She organized the first joint annual Freedom and Justice conference of the National Economic Association (NEA) and the American Society for Hispanic Economists (ASHE). She received her doctorate in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Professor Banks is currently working on several book projects including a biography and an edited volume of the speeches and writings of Sadie Alexander (Yale University Press), a manuscript titled, Gender, Race, and Environmental Activism: Women of Color Working for Tomorrow (University of Toronto Press), and a coauthored book (with Cecilia Conrad and Rhonda Sharpe) on Black Women in the U.S. Economy: the Hardest Working Woman (Routledge).